On
Wednesday the New York Stock Exchange world’s biggest stock exchange
founded 213 years ago will go public. Its goal is to build a war chest
in order to buy up other stock exchanges around the world. These actions
herald a new phase in the new world order.

With
stock exchanges around the world going public, it is the New York
Stock Exchange that is the last of the private non-profit companies
to offer shares to the public. You can imagine that if all the exchanges
in the world are listed companies, then the mergers and acquisitions
that are common among other stocks will also be part of the stock
exchange empire. Can you imagine the NYX, as the new public company
will be called, buying the Euronext and/or the London Stock Exchange?
Talk about power! This is a parallel to the central banking power
that now runs the global banking system.

Furthermore,
within the last eleven years, the coming of a global stock exchange
will compliment an evolving global currency and global tax. For those
who say world government is far off, you had better point them in
this direction. In order to understand what Wednesday really means,
let us review structures that have been put in place that compliment
a global stock exchange.

When
Andrew Jackson was elected President in 1828 he announced in his first
message that he would not renew the charter of America’s first central
bank. He ended up vetoing the law Congress passed to re-charter the
Bank. Jackson pointed out that the bank’s stock, valued at $8 million,
was held by foreigners--chiefly in Britain. His concern was that a
majority of shares of its stock might fall into alien hands, which
if we were involved in a war, could use its influence against the
United States.

In
1913, the question of a central bank came up again. The people involved
in this effort included some of the wealthiest people in America:
Senator Nelson Aldrich (grandfather of David Rockefeller); Jacob Schiff
and Paul Warburg of Kuhn, Loeb and Company, an international banking
house; Piatt Andrew, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury; Henry P.
Davidson, Senior Partner of J.P. Morgan & Company; Charles D. Norton,
and Frank Vanderlip, President of National City Bank which today is
CitiGroup. The passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was done
through chicanery. Those in the Senate who favored the Act did not
go home while those that were against it went home for Christmas.
In a special session convened with quorum, the Act passed at 11:45
p.m. on December 24, 1913.

With
the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, our monetary system changed
back to one of control by a private corporation and not the U.S. Treasury.
Our currency now says, “Federal Reserve Note.” Earlier in the day
on December 24, 1913, Congressman Charles A. Lindberg, Jr. stated
from the House floor: “This Act established the most gigantic trust
on earth. When the President signs this bill, the invisible government
by the Monetary Power will be legalized…The worst legislative crime
of the ages is perpetrated by this banking bill.” We should note that
President Woodrow Wilson could have vetoed this bill like Andrew Jackson
did, but he was put in power by the same powers that passed the bill.

Since
1913, the Federal Reserve has evolved into a very powerful entity
globally. The Federal Reserve Act has been amended over 195 times
with greater empowerments in the last ten years that have included
more types of discount window loans. The discount window is where
banks borrow from the Fed overnight to maintain their stated level
of capitalization. The Fed now accepts for collateral: Treasury and
federal agency securities, gold certificates, Special Drawing Rights,
foreign currencies, and discount window loans made under Section 13
of the Federal Reserve Act. What this means is that as the indebtedness
of America grows, the Fed is willing to take more types of collateral
to secure their loans to the government!

As
a result of the Asian Crisis in 1997-1998, the Group of Seven finance
ministers, under the direction of President Bill Clinton and then
Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin invited the central bank ministers
of the G7 countries to join them in their discussions. Since 1998,
it is both the G7 treasury secretaries and the central bank ministers
who are directing the global economy.

The
role of central banking in the United States was seen after the crash
of the stock market in 1929. The Crash came about as a result of (1)
America reducing the gold content of the dollar by 40%, (2) Speculation
in the stock market, much of which was financed by credit, (3) Foreign
investors selling their stocks, and (4) the Federal Reserve taking
money out of the banking system which the Fed thought would stop the
frenzy. In other words, this private corporation used the same technique
used to burst the Nasdaq bubble seventy-two years later—they took
money out of the banking system which made the market drop.

The
Fed or any central bank is able to create market highs or lows by
the amount of money they pump into the banking system (they buy U.S.
Treasuries, which puts money into the system) or by taking money out
of the banking system by selling U.S. Treasuries. When the Federal
Reserve took money out of the banking system, it caused the Depression.
John Maynard Keynes, a British socialist and economist, came over
to advise President Franklin Roosevelt. His solution was to go into
debt in order to stimulate the economy. President Roosevelt financed
all of his New Deal programs by borrowing money.

The
legacy today of Roosevelt and Keynesian economics is that every level
of government is broke: local, county, state, and federal and every
level of government is selling assets in order to pay down debt. In
the last several years, the City of Chicago sold the Chicago Skyway,
a toll road to Spain’s Grupo Ferrovial and to a unit of Australia’s
Macquarie Bank for $1.8B. Since then other toll roads around the country
are being sold. The ports are part of the same equation.

When
President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected on his “New Deal for the
American People” program, his first act as president on his inaugural,
March 4, 1933, was to declare a national bank holiday. For the next
8 days, banks were closed because of the number of people withdrawing
their savings in gold.

A
little more than a month later, on April 20, Roosevelt passed the
Emergency Banking Act of 1933 which took America off the gold standard.
It put an end to the following: (1) Convertibility of notes into gold
for Americans but allowed foreign countries to convert their gold-backed
dollars at any time and (2) Private ownership of gold was made illegal
except if you were a rare gold coin collector. In essence the American
financial system was transferred from a standard of accountability
which used gold to guard against excess debt, to a system in which
there is no accountability. All a government has to do is print money.
This opened the door for the massive debt which is Keynesian economics
at its finest: a world in debt to a private group of bankers.

However,
if you really want to control the monetary system of the world, not
only do you have to control the banking system, but you have to devalue
its money. It was President Nixon who severed any remaining ties the
dollar had to the gold standard in 1971. Between 1933 and 1971, foreign
countries that owned gold backed dollars were able to redeem them
for gold. However, when Nixon closed the “Gold Window”, it changed
the monetary system of the world from one in which currency was gold-backed
to a paper system. Basically what Nixon did was to DEFAULT on millions
of dollars that those countries held in their vaults.

There
is no other historic incident that can equate the financial devastation
that Nixon did when he took the dollar off the gold standard. Never
before in the 6,000 year history of trade, was a piece of paper been
used. During Biblical times and earlier, traders used animals,
jewels, expensive clothing, and gold and silver to trade. These all
have TANGIBLE value. Today, the world is on a fiat monetary system
that has nothing of value supporting it. The purchasing power can
drop simply by government printing more paper money! From what we
can understand, this was the first phase of changing the monetary
system of the world.

The
second phase was to internationalize it. In 1944, finance ministers
from over 40 countries of the world met in New Hampshire to set up
financial international institutions that would deal with a post-War
world: the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Their objective
was to set in place global institutions that would facilitate the
financial and economic integration of the nation-states. That however
was not the immediate objective. Both of these institutions were set
in place to facilitate loans to help rebuild war-torn Europe. Today
on a bi-annual basis, finance ministers from 186 countries of the
world meet to determine the state of the world’s finances. Both of
these organizations have been instrumental in “harmonizing” financial
growth around the world and redistributing growth from strong countries
to weaker countries. In fact, the World Bank established the International
Finance Corporation that has established over 60 stock exchanges in
third world countries.

From
an economic standpoint, if you are going to put a global economic
infrastructure in place, it must also be political and encompass trade.
The United Nations was established in 1945 and the final piece of
a global trading system was birthed in 1994 when our Congress passed
the 27,000 page General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs which established
the World Trade Organization. The purpose of which is to have a completely
flat trading system—no barriers of any kind. No longer does the American
farmer, accountant, manufacturer, or engineer compete with his competition
across town, but he now competes on a global playing field. Since
President Bush II has been in office, 2.7 million jobs have left the
U.S.

Open
borders supported by the World Trade Organization need for the countries
of the world to de-regulate laws that restrict where people can invest.
In 1980, during the Carter presidency, Congress passed the Monetary
De-Regulation Act of 1980. It impacted the U.S. in several ways: First,
it changed various federal laws as foreigners could now invest in
America and Americans could now invest outside the United States.
These changes led to the proliferation of foreign and global mutual
funds, global mergers and acquisitions between companies, and $2T
in stateless money running around the world daily looking for higher
returns and a quick currency play. Obviously the integration of investments
and corporations is part of making the world one and in changing its
currency from individual nation-state currencies to a global currency.
Secondly, it gave the Federal Reserve more power over the U.S. banking
system.

At
the 1995 Group of Seven meeting in Halifax, the heads of state and
the G7 finance ministers embarked on putting in place a “new international
financial architecture.” It included a number of deep empowerments
and structural changes being made to the International Monetary Fund
and the World Bank in order to prepare it for a world without borders.
The IMF has the responsibilities which include “surveillance” of the
world’s banking systems and the flow of monies worldwide. In addition,
the IMF makes available lines of credit for countries in trouble,
our Congress graciously made $18B available for this purpose. These
changes were touted by both Robert Rubin and his successor Larry Summers
as necessary for the 21st century. This is all part and parcel of
the evolving global stock exchange.

Of
course, no take-over of the global economic infrastructure would be
possible without changing key laws. In 1999, Congress passed HR10
which was the “Banking Modernization Act.” It helped modernize our
banking system by repealing the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act which separated
commercial banking from investment banking. HR10 merged these two
activities, thus returning the stock market to pre-1929 times. In
addition it provided for foreign banks, insurance companies, and brokerage
firms to buy American banks, insurance companies, and brokerage firms.

So
now if you are going to globalize the entire financial architecture,
you then need international accounting standards. Using Enron as an
exampled, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker called for
international accounting standards. The fact that he is chairman of
the Board of the Trustees for the International Accounting Standards
Committee (IASC) which is located in London was very convenient! Now
countries around the world are converting to these new rules.

Getting
“Joe Average” into the market was also necessary. By the end of the
1990s, the highest number of Americans, 45%, owned stocks either through
a 401k, IRA, or personally. Today, the market has a psychological
affect on people. When it is up, people feel good and when it is down,
they are not happy. When Greenspan was Fed Chairman, the bottom line
is that “When Greenspan speaks, the markets listen.”

Lastly,
to facilitate a global financial architecture, you need “market-based
democracy” – that is what Treasury Secretary John Snow called it in
February, 2004. He basically told the world that every market is dependent
on growth in another country and that we need to let market forces
work.

Secretary
Snow was signaling the new MARKET BASED GOVERNANCE SYSTEM in
which the stock, bond, commodity, and currency markets now rule the
world. This change has been coming for some time and began with President
Reagan and the privatization or selling off of government assets that
he encouraged. Those assets, in some cases, went into the market.
The World Bank also developed the market by setting up stock exchanges
in many developing countries where there were none: China, Russia,
Brazil, South Africa, Ghana, Poland, etc. To help these countries
have stock to trade on their new exchange, they sold or privatized
state owned assets: railroads, banks, telephones in order to list
them on their new exchange. According to the World Bank, more than
80 countries are selling state-owned assets.

At
one point in our banking history, banks held the loans they made as
part of their portfolio: mortgages, automobile loans, credit card
loans, and personal loans. Today, banks have sold them and transferred
the risk that they use to assume to the market (you and me). This
technique is called “securitization.” What this means is that the
market now is like the kitchen sink—everything is in it: mortgages,
auto loans, credit card loans, home equity loans, stocks, bonds---everything
and now stock exchanges!

In
2002, based on remarks by Dr. Jacob Frenkel, I asked him if he saw
a global currency in the market for a globalized world. He told me
that before we could have a global currency, we needed harmonization
of economies. Eighteen months later I asked former Federal Reserve
Chairman Paul Volcker if we needed a global currency and he told me,
“For the long term—but it’s a long ways off, if we are going to be
successful in a globalized world, we should have an international
currency.” Since 2004, I have been asking key officials at the Bank
for International Settlements in Basle about a global currency, they
have told me it is a long way off. I don’t know what they call “a
long way off” for chief economist William White just issued a Working
Paper, #193, in which he says the global imbalances that the world
economy currently has will lead either to a return to the gold system
(which is highly unlikely since you can’t print paper like we are
currently doing) or an international currency.

So
now we have the harmonization of world economies, the calls for an
international currency, a market based system in which all assets
are now traded on the stock or bond exchange and we are seeing now
the rise of a global stock exchange! All we need now is global taxation
and that too, is in the works.

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The
United States is the only country in the world NOT to have a Value
Added Tax and this is now part of President Bushes “tax simplification”
measures. As well, France is the first country to put a tax on airline
tickets to help the poor countries of the world. There are ten other
countries that are considering it as well. I asked French President
Jacques Chirac what he thought about a tax on airline tickets and
he told me that if it was success, “many more global taxes of this
kind” were being planned. Welcome to the new world order. World government
is not coming. It is here.

Joan Veon is a businesswoman and international
reporter, having covered 64 Global meetings around the world in the last
ten years. Please visit her website: www.womensgroup.org.
To get a copy of her WTO report, send $10.00 to The Women's International
Media Group, Inc. P. O. Box 77, Middletown, MD 21769. For an information
packet, please call 301-371-0541

Since
1913, the Federal Reserve has evolved into a very powerful entity globally.
The Federal Reserve Act has been amended over 195 times with greater empowerments
in the last ten years that have included more types of discount window
loans.